 | Parts of this article (those related to History) need to be updated. The reason given is: Has not been updated since 2004 and this is still an extremely active and notable dance company.(May 2023) |
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT) is a modern dance company based in New York City. It was founded in 1958 by choreographer and dancer Alvin Ailey. It is made up of 32 dancers, led by artistic director Robert Battle and associate artistic director Matthew Rushing.
Alvin Ailey and a group of young Black modern dancers first performed at New York's 92nd Street Young Men's Hebrew Association (92nd Street Y), under the name Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT), in March 1958. [1] Ailey was the company's director, choreographer, and principal dancer. The company started as an ensemble of only seven dancers, plus their choreographer, and many guest choreographers. [2]
Following their first performance, which included Ailey's Blues Suite, the company traveled on what were known as the "station wagon tours"; in 1960, the AAADT became a resident company of the 51st Street YWCA's Clark Center for the Performing Arts. [3] During this period Ailey choreographed his famous work Revelations , a character dance done to traditional music. In 1962, Ailey changed his all-black dance company into a multi-racial group. [2] In that same year, the company was chosen to tour the Far East, Southeast Asia and Australia as part of President John F. Kennedy's "President's Special International Program for Cultural Presentations". AAADT was the first "Black" company to travel for Kennedy's program. [4]
In 1960, James Truitte joined the dance company, and later became an authority on Horton's technique. [5] [6]
Judith Jamison, a star of the company for 15 years, joined the company in 1965. [7]
Ailey established a school in 1969, the same year that the company moved to the Brooklyn Academy of Music. [8] Both company and school relocated to 229 East 59th Street in Manhattan a year later, to a renovated church building. [9] In April of that year, a financial crisis caused Ailey to issue a statement that the dissolution of the company might take place. [10] The crisis abated, however, and in 1971 AAADT made its first performance at the New York City Center. [11]
AAADT, the Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble (later renamed Ailey II), and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center (later renamed The Ailey School) relocated in 1980 to four new studios in a building on Broadway. The company celebrated its 25th anniversary three years later. [12]
Alvin Ailey died on December 1, 1989; before his death he selected Judith Jamison to succeed him as artistic director, [12] and the entire Ailey organization moved to 211 West 61st Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The Ailey School and nearby Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC), Fordham University, have since affiliated to offer a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree program. [13]
Following tours in Russia, France and Cuba in the 1990s, as well as a residency in South Africa in 1997, the Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation announced in 2001 that a new dance complex was to be developed. Ground was broken on the building site in Manhattan the following year. The company and school moved into the building, named the Joan Weill Center for Dance, in 2004. [14]
The Ailey School is an accredited institutional member of the National Association of Schools of Dance (NASD). The school is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as an institution of higher education and is eligible to participate in Title IV programs.
Many people have contributed to the success of AAADT, but the work of Michael Kaiser, the executive director from 1990 to 1993, is often cited [15] [16] [17] as a model of successful nonprofit performing arts management.
Masazumi Chaya, who later served as associate artistic director for 28 years, first joined the company as a dancer in 1972. [18]
After 21 seasons (since 1989), Jamison personally selected Robert Battle to succeed her as Ailey's artistic director in 2011, and The New York Times declared he "has injected the company with new life." [19]
Troy Powell became artistic director of Ailey II in 2012, succeeding artistic director emerita Sylvia Waters, who ran the junior company for its first 38 years. [20] Powell was fired in 2020 after allegations of sexual misconduct involving students and other young dancers surfaced online. [21] Francesca Harper, daughter of former school director Denise Jefferson, was appointed director of Ailey II in 2021. [22]
Denise Jefferson was selected by Ailey to head the school when it was founded in 1984, and served as its director until her death in 2010. [23]
In 2010, The Ailey School hired Tracy Inman and Melanie Person to be the school’s co-directors. [24]
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has performed for an estimated 25 million people in 48 states, as well as 71 countries on six continents. Among these performances are included two South African residencies. The company has often been an ambassador for American culture, starting with President John F. Kennedy's Southeast Asia tour program. The troupe toured southeast Asia and Australia in 1962, and performed in the International Arts Festival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1963. They performed at the first World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal, in 1966. In 1968, AAADT performed at the Edinburgh Festival, earning awards for "best choreographer", and "best company". They were also awarded "best male dancer" at the International Dance Festival in Paris in 1970, the same year that they did a six-city tour of the USSR. [2] The company and its dancers and artistic staff have been recognized as cultural ambassadors numerous times, as in the 2001 awarding of the National Medal of Arts to both Judith Jamison and the Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation. [25] In 2008, the United States Congress passed a resolution officially designating the company a "vital American Cultural Ambassador to the World." [26] [27] [28]
Founder Alvin Ailey created more than 79 dances for his company during his tenure; he also maintained, however, that the company was not solely a repository for his choreography. Hence AAADT has a repertory of more than 235 works by more than 90 choreographers, including Ulysses Dove, Karole Armitage, George Faison, Uri Sands, Elisa Monte, Talley Beatty, Katherine Dunham, Donald Byrd, and Twyla Tharp (whose work The Golden Section, excerpted from her larger ballet, The Catherine Wheel , entered AAADT's repertory in 2006). The company's popularity comes from its theatrical, extroverted style of dancers with strong personalities and muscular skill. Yet the majority of AAADT's pieces have not held the stage for more than a few seasons, and comparatively few have managed to reach critical acclaim. However, the company keeps Alvin Ailey's works, including Revelations (1960), Night Creature (1974) and Cry (1971), in continuous performance. Memoria was one of Alvin Ailey's balletic pieces, with long lines and a clear technical style different from his usual jazz character style of swirling patters, strong, driving arm movements, huge jumps, and thrusting steps. This dance was later adopted into the repertory of the Royal Danish Ballet. Cry is a three-part, 17-minute solo created for Judith Jamison. It was meant to pay homage to "all Black women everywhere, especially our mothers" and can be seen as a journey from degradation to pride, defiance, and survival. [2] Cry has great physical and emotional demands on both performer and audience. [29] [30] [31] [32]
Battle has expanded the company's repertory in significant ways, adding works by established choreographers such as Garth Fagan, Jiri Kylian, Wayne McGregor, Ohad Naharin and Paul Taylor, and commissioning new dances from contemporary choreographers including Kyle Abraham and Aszure Barton. In 2011, Battle also established a New Directions Choreography Lab to nurture emerging artists. [33]
Alvin Ailey Jr. was an American dancer, director, choreographer, and activist who founded the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT). He created AAADT and its affiliated Alvin Ailey American Dance Center as havens for nurturing Black artists and expressing the universality of the African-American experience through dance.
Renee Robinson is a retired American dancer from Washington, D.C., who performed as a Principal Dancer of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. She began her dance training in classical ballet at the Jones-Haywood School of Ballet. She also attended the School of American Ballet, the Dance Theatre of Harlem and The Ailey School. Robinson was a member of the Alvin Ailey II, before becoming a member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 1981.
Gawain Garth Fagan, CD is a Jamaican modern dance choreographer. He is the founder and artistic director of Garth Fagan Dance, a modern dance company based in Rochester, New York.
Judith Ann Jamison is an American dancer and choreographer. She is the artistic director emerita of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
Robert Garland is the artistic director of the Dance Theatre of Harlem, where he was a principal dancer and their first official resident choreographer. He has also choreographed for the New York City Ballet, The Royal Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, and the Oakland Ballet, among many others.
The Harkness Ballet (1964–1975) was a New ballet company named after its founder Rebekah Harkness. Harkness inherited her husband's fortune in Standard Oil holdings, and was a dance lover. Harkness funded Joffrey Ballet, but when they refused to rename the company in her honour, she withdrew funding and hired most of the Joffrey dancers for her new company. Joffrey Ballet later moved to Chicago, and continues to function.
Revelations is the best-known work of the modern dance choreographer Alvin Ailey. It is also the signature work of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, which premiered an extended version of the work in 1960, when Ailey was 29 years old. Set to spirituals, gospel, and blues music and influenced by the choreographer's own Christian upbringing, it presents a vision of the historical African American experience from a church-inspired perspective. The three sections of the final 36-minute revised version depict the suffering of slavery, baptismal joy, and a choral church celebration.
Christine Dakin is an American dancer, teacher and director, a foremost exponent of the Martha Graham repertory and technique.
Robert Battle is a dancer, choreographer and the former Artistic Director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
Jacqulyn Buglisi is an American choreographer, artistic director, dancer, educator, and founder/co-founder of multiple dance institutions. Buglisi, with Terese Capucilli, Christine Dakin and Donlin Foreman, founded Buglisi Dance Theatre in 1993/94.
Katarzyna Skarpetowska is a dancer and choreographer of Polish descent. She danced with the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company from 2007 - 2014, and Parsons Dance Company. from 1999-2006. Her choreography, often set on the Parsons company, is noted for providing a more emotionally complicated contrast to Parson's work.
George W. Faison is an American dancer, choreographer, teacher, and theater producer, and winner of a 1975 Tony, a Drama Desk Award, and a 1991 nominee for the Emmy Award for choreography. He was a featured dancer with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, founder of the George Faison Universal Dance Experience, and co-founder/producing artistic director of the Faison Firehouse Theater.
Francesca Harper is an American dancer and choreographer.
Kathryn Posin is an American choreographer known for her musical and sculptural fusing of ballet and modern dance genres. In addition to choreographing, she has also taught technique and composition at several American universities. Her most recent season with The Kathryn Posin Dance Company commissioned by 92nd Street Y in February 2016 received an award from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and an Arts Works Grant from the NEA in 2017.
Masazumi Chaya is a Japanese American dancer, choreographer and was the associate artistic director of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (AAADT) from 1991 to 2020.
Tracy Inman is an American dancer, choreographer, and educator who performed with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. He is currently the co-director of The Ailey School and a choreographer & consultant for the television series Pose.
Troy Powell also known as Troy O'Neil Powell is an American dancer, choreographer, educator, and director. He is a former principal dancer with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and former artistic director of AAADT's second company, Ailey 2. Powell was fired in July 2020 after an independent investigation into allegations of sexual abuse at the Ailey School concluded that he had engaged in "inappropriate communications" with students who were interested in joining the Ailey 2.
Donald Byrd is an American modern dance choreographer, known for themes relating to social justice, and in particular, racism.
Jacqueline Green is an American ballet dancer with the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York. She is noted for her elegant and commanding presence on stage as well as her unusually rapid ascent in being recognized as a great and powerful dancer.
Hope Boykin is an American dancer, choreographer, educator, director, writer, and speaker who is a former member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. Her mission is to create and share "within an environment of acceptance, brings new levels of awareness. Exploring, developing, and teaching a sound and healthy approach to movement and expression, promotes growth. Lifting and leading young and aspiring artists to a secure foundation and a concrete understanding evolves a confidence and an assurance which will be unmatched. There are no limits." She has inspired many with her journey to sharing her continued explorations with others on her path to search for hope. She continues to exhibit that her voice is indeed relevant and continues to remain significant within the dance community and world today.
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